Ten simple rules for giving an effective academic job talk.

Abstract

You’ve finally completed your dissertation research and have your PhD in hand—yay! Maybe you’re also in the middle of a postdoctoral position. If you’re reading this article, chances are you are actively searching for and applying for faculty positions. (Check out reference [1] if you’re early in the application process and [2] for additional advice!) Unfortunately, many graduate students and postdocs are not taught the skills necessary for acquiring a faculty position after passing the “looks good on paper” part of the application and securing an on-campus interview. One of the last crucial steps in earning a faculty position is your academic job talk. No matter how great of a scientist you are, if you cannot give a compelling job talk, chances are low that you will be hired. Yet many candidates receive little guidance on how to ace this unique and vital test. To help address this gap, we have put together these ten simple rules that will help you give an effective job talk. To be clear, these are rules developed for the academic job talk in a research-heavy department, which is typically in a seminar format. These rules are not targeted toward other formats such as chalk talks or teaching demonstrations, although some pointers may still apply. We are a group primarily composed of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) faculty, postdocs, and graduate students who participated in two recent job searches in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. We evaluated ten job talks over the span of 2 months and discussed their strengths and weaknesses in a weekly seminar course. These ten rules are based on our discussions of what worked (and what didn’t) across the variety of job talks we observed, as well as our various experiences on the job market and search committees over the years.